There appear real moral reasons why the United States should do everything it can to protect the independent state of Taiwan diplomatically, politically, and militarily as long as the People’s Republic of China represents a direct threat to American interests directly and globally. In nearly every one of its major international actions over the past three decades, its leaders have staked out positions that are inimical to the values that the United States purports to uphold. Their treatment of the Uyghur people suggests a level of callousness that borders on genocide, in this case one that that destroys the culture and religion of a people without killing them—and an effort that has brought the most modern technologies to bear. Chinese disregard for international behavior in its relations to its neighbors in the South China Sea hardly need mentioning to this audience. The behavior of creating military bases in that area represents, however, more of a political than a military threat.
The real threat to America’s position comes strategically in two areas in East Asia: the Senkaku Islands and Taiwan. Both of them represent distinct threats to the geographic advantage that the Americans and their allies enjoy in the great sweep of islands that lie immediately to the east of the Asian mainland. Swinging south from Japan through Okinawa, then Taiwan and the Philippines and finally to Malaysia and Indonesia, that island chain blocks China in a military sense from access to the great spaces of the Central Pacific. Currently, the islands represent as great an impediment to Chinese strategy as the British Isles represented to the Kriegsmarine in two world wars. In effect Britain’s geographic position limited the German Navy to the North Sea and the northern entrance to the English Channel.1
The Senkaku Islands represent less of a threat because Japanese and American naval and air forces appear more than sufficient to block any Chinese efforts to seize and utilize those islands militarily. Taiwan represents a different case entirely. Its control by the naval and air arms of the People’s Liberation Army would punch an enormous hole in the whole strategic geography of the current situation in East Asia. It would outflank Japan and South Korea to Taiwan’s north, putting both of America’s crucial allies in considerable danger. It would certainly make U.S. cooperation with those two islands more difficult politically and militarily. Equally seriously, it would place the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia in an even more dangerous strategic position, because none of those three nations possess the economic or military strength to resist Chinese pressure of any kind unless the United States is in a position to render significant military help.
Finally, and perhaps most important, possession of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army would open up a vast hole in the first line of island defenses that shields off the island chains in the Central Pacific, beginning with Guam on which America’s military strength in the Eastern Pacific rests. It would put the United States on the defensive throughout the Marianas rather than having them as jumping off points for operations on islands to the east. Moreover, it might well force America’s defensive line all the way back to the Marshalls and even Hawaii.
And so does the United States at present possess the wherewithal to defend Taiwan? At present, this author believes that it does. But the larger issue is that we have every reason to want to insure that Taiwan’s defenses are such that the Chinese dare not undertake dangerous political or military actions against that crucial strategic piece of real estate. It might well involve selling the F-35 to Taiwan instead of the upgraded F-16s. But above all we need to insure that our military ducks are in line to deter China from making the disastrous mistake of attempting to invade Taiwan.
